We will be closed Monday, February 27 through Friday, March 3 as we build new adventures! The shop will remain open Monday-Thursday 10am-5pm, and Friday 12pm-5pm. The attraction and shop will return to normal hours on Saturday, March 4. The LEGOLAND® Discovery Center is a world of color, creativity and fun for children aged 3 to 10. We offer a wealth of attractions, two rides, 4D cinema and more. Click through to the pages below to make the most out of your visit. How to get here Also in this section Things to do in WestchesterIf you are a LEGO train fan, there is a project on LEGO CUUSOO you might really like. It is a fully functional turntable for LEGO trains, motorized with LEGO Power Function elements, as well as a roundhouse. CUUSOO project creator Rasmus Fachman requested that we feature his model here as he would really like to get your feedback and support. Turntables are used for trains to be able to fully turn around or sent into different directions. I
n locations where the trains also had a maintenance facility, the turntable is often surrounded by a building called a roundhouse where the trains can be repaired. As you can imagine creating a fully functional turntable out of LEGO is not an easy task. Especially if you also want to make it look realistic. You need to find the right parts to use, and the right radius for the turntable to work properly and align smoothly with the tracks. And making the whole thing motorized is just adding perfection! Rasmus was able to accomplish all of this after a lot of testing and tweaking, designing a beautiful turntable for LEGO trains, using only currently available LEGO parts and Power Function elements (no need for LEGO to make special parts for this project, which is definitely a plus). The other part of this LEGO train project is the roundhouse. I particularly like this design! Rasmus made the roundhouse modular style; designing a mid-section and an end-section that can be combined to create any size roundhouse for your LEGO trains. V
The LEGO Train Turntable & Roundhouse is really a dream-come-true for LEGO train fans, especially those with a large LEGO train layout. It is impressive, functional, and does what real turntables do; get those trains sent out in the right direction. The weakness I see in this CUUSOO project is that it doesn’t address cost or a business model that LEGO might be comfortable with. However even if it doesn’t get selected as an official LEGO project I really hope that Rasmus will provide instructions and a list of parts needed to build it. I think this LEGO train project would be perfect for a LEGO book on trains! And if the LEGO Train Turntable & Roundhouse does get 10,000 votes on CUUSOO and LEGO gives it the green-light, this would be a perfect set for LEGO train fans! If you would like to give your support and vote for the LEGO Train & Roundhouse project and to see more details go to: Vote for LEGO Train & Roundhouse on CUUSOO So what do you think of this LEGO train project? Ho
w do you like the design? Would you like it to be made into an actual LEGO set? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below! Rasmus would love to hear your feedback! 😉 And you might also like to check out the following related posts: This small train station evokes classic small town train stations. With just a few parking spots, a single ticket booth and a small platform, this station is just the right size for a stop in your small town. Directions are given on how to place the track to accommodate 6,7 and 8-stud wide trains. Building and parking lot sit on a custom-sized 32x56 baseplate area. What do I get? Norfolk Southern Passenger Cars Diesel Switcher and Refrigerator Car Enter the address below in your GPS to find your way to LEGOLAND® Billund. Nordmarksvej 9, 7190 Billund, Denmark There are bus connections to Billund from many cities, and the buses stop right outside LEGOLAND. Plan your journey here. By train and bus
There are train stations in Vejle, Kolding, Fredericia and Give with bus connections to Billund, and the buses stop right outside LEGOLAND. Plan your journey here Billund International Airport is not far from LEGOLAND, with direct connections to most of Europe - and the rest of the world via Copenhagen. Book your ticket online already now and save 10% - and skip the ticket queue If you can't get enough of LEGOLAND® and want to see it all. You can buy an extra day for only 129 DKKLEGO Trains are lovely. Their tracks are lovely, but I really miss the possibility of making several levels circuits ( btw check this Top 10 LEGO Trains list). At first, being new to LEGO, I though that maybe there was a special part to create slopes much like the one that exists for LEGO Duplo. But it looks like there isn’t. Someone show me a train diorama with several levels where the inclines were created with the ground that was done with some kind of sintetic material and the LEGO tracks simply lay over it.
It was nice, but I want to buld my slopes out of LEGO bricks. So here it is how I did it. So, being an engineer myself…, the first thing I do was built directly without any plans or measures, just using common sense and LOTS of LEGO Tracks. Yes, it works but I wasn’t happy at all with the result. If you notice the track isn’t continuos and it has bumps that make the train jump and the downside of the incline was too step so the train gets too much speed. So, time for a bit of maths. Let me show you the video and I explain later what I did and how I did.It is nice but still you see the train derails on corners and takes a bit of problem climbing. Here it is all the HOWTO and then I explain you a few tips to make it work. There are two concepts that we really want to apply to our inclines building technique: continuity and incline angle. I promise to be light and readable. We don’t want huge changes in the slope because it would add dangerous bumps into the track that will surely make our train derail… and trust me that you don’t want to kill all those innocent LEGO minifigs
So the slope has to change slowly. Using the LEGO System we have two different measures, the brick and the plate, were three plates are one brick. So the only way to do a smooth transition is using at first one plate, two plates and finally one brick on the three first tracks… and keep that method for the rest of tracks… too many tracks don’t you think? So this introduce us the slope angle. Now we have to define how step is our incline. The higher the more difficult would be for our train to climb it. I have been told on several forums that I should just add another motor to the train and problem solved… that’s one way, the other is just use more tracks and make the angle smallers. Conventional trains must not travel on slopes bigger than 3%, that’s means that the train should never climb more than 3 metres vertical each 100 meters horizontal. To know the angle you just need to compute the arctan of B/A. Personally, I decided that the angle approach was pointless as I wasn’t able to use 60 straight tracks to get my train up and down… so instead I just decide that I want to climb 12 bricks high using 16 straight LEGO Train tracks.
If you see the above diagram you will see that it is pretty straightforward to compute how tall each track must be. It is just constant to (A/B)=(C/D) Watch the video of it working and a bit below you have the PDF with all the values and a Excel sheet in case you need to change the values. It really depends on the trains you are using, but a common number is between 14 and 16 bricks tall. So if you do the basic match, each straight track is 16 studs long, an each stud is 8mm long, while the brick is 9.6mm high so… To climb 14 bricks with a 3% incline we need…35 straight tracks to climb safely to 14 bricks high. No, I am not mad… I don’t have the 4.5 meters needed for this, so even forget about the tracks, you would need 35 to climb and another 35 to go down. That’s the price of perfection… So as you are perhaps as limited by constraints like room and tracks as me, use this Excel sheet. Using the above principles, you just write how many tracks do you want to spend and it will give you the height in bricks and plates of each of the pillars.
I have done a PDF for 12 bricks height and 16 tracks long. You will save time and mental health if you build two pillars of each height, that way you will have done the up and down inclines. Keep in mind that you will also need a good amount of LEGO bricks to build the pillars. One option that I have used it making part of them out of LEGO Duplo bricks. You will save lots of bricks that way, although the result isn’t as good. I built them using the LEGO Digital Designer for climbing 12 bricks of height in 16 tracks. That’s a mean slope of 3.5º. Yes, in fact that’s what I did on my second approach. But keep in mind that the slope with curved tracks must be even softer than with straight tracks or the train will derail and fall from the track. I haven’t really tried it myself but the accepted agreement here is that no, you need at least one flat track before a switch track or the train will derail. When everything else fails just go to The LEGO Shop and order another motor, they are just 12€ each.